Rakuen
by So Guhn
Summary: All is good and tainted on the path to paradise. Musings of a Wolf. Angst One-shot


A/N: For my 'Wolf's Rain' addiction; bit of obsessive fan-ness...funny how my favourite character is Toboe...

Disclaimer: 'Wolf's Rain' belongs to Toshihiro Kawamoto, Bones, and its other respectful owners.

Rakuen

October 23, 2004

By: Arashi, Fuyumiko

It is raining again.

The town is covered in its softness, glazed with whispers. Secret words. Quietly within me I sing the howling wolf's song of mourning; to accompany the sadness in the rain.

I have never told any one, but I am fond of the scent of rain. It is pure and innocent; it washes away the impurities around me. I love that, that knowing feeling. Their words are enthralling; but not as Paradise's song was.

Such a melody.

Even now, I can hear it, the silent caressing call of it. Every night, every waking moment. I still remember the scent of moonflowers. Such a calming aroma. When I slept the images would come back, Hige laughing, Toboe trying to charm Tsume into smiling, Blue worrying over the old human she called 'Pops'.

The fragrance was what haunted me the most.

So I run.

Through streets littered with black, smoke entrails and filth. My heart cries out at the wrongness. What has happened? Where is my paradise? I search forever.

Out there the world is a freezing desolate, lonely place. Heaven is always within the mind's eye, an unreachable place. A place I will go to. It is my duty, my heart longs for it. I belong in paradise.

For I am a wolf.

Yet even as a wolf I can be weak as I am strong, strong as I was and am, the pain in my heart still lingers like a bad scar. Memories of that day.

That day. When the world ended. Limbs stretched out on the dead ground, blooming, reaching out to embrace the fate of the world. She had looked at me, the most painful look in her eyes, blood red against mahogany.

With arms holding me as if I were fragile, in a voice barely the wind could comprehend, I heard her beautiful words. 'Destiny will allow us to meet again' I miss her voice, her lullabies of the moon.

I do not believe destiny.

I believe in paradise.

When you spend all your life traveling on that one path you know that will lead you to that _one thing_, you feel close to complete. It was not futile, my searching.

Even when the snow started to fall, my body loosing heat as my blood stained the snow. I thought within the bearings of my soul 'Now I die,'

In that moment I realized one thing. Paradise is real, truly. Since my birth I have questioned it; and ran. Ran to make sure the beat it my chest would not go away, I knew if I searched hard enough I would find it, find her.

And so I did, for once in my life I knew what 'beauty' was. From the bottom of my soul I just thought with that perfect swelling in my chest 'I've finally found you,'

With her, with the others, I felt like I wasn't lost anymore. I could smile and be me, just... _Kiba._

Those memories are what I want to stay with me forever.

Before, my blood ran cold; seeing into that one eye, that human eye. He was not a wolf. As we had fought, the ground painted with heat of our blood, I knew. He knew, he was human; a creature such as he was just as soiled as the rest.

He could not enter paradise. He was a creature living for himself. Every painful move I made, it was for her. I had to protect her. Quite, the wretched beast appeared before me. And he was tainted with poison.

My desperation, when I could barely move I begged. He had neared Cheza.

'You must loose everything,' Darcia had said.

And so I had.

The woman went into the ice, the old man died with the protection of Toboe, Blue and Hige- both had fought valiantly for vengeance, and Tsume had lost them all.

As had I.

Before my very eyes Cheza died, the world ended and breathed again.

Every star fell; the moon had bled a defying red.

The snow covered me. Gravity called to me once again. Pulled through the shell of the outer Earth I was swept under into an eternal realm of ice.

Within my chest my heart did beat.

Paradise was still calling. The moon hanging immortally in the pitch sky lost its loneliness. Slowly, with out neither sound nor note of anything they bloomed.

Uncurling blossoms of freedom. She had created that.

This rebirth.

This paradise.

The world was reborn in the scent of the moon.


End file.
